The present invention relates generally to telecommunications systems, and more particularly, to a monitoring system for telephony resources in a call center.
A typical call center includes a number of agents who field inbound telephone calls and place outbound telephone calls. Each agent has an associated station that includes a personal computer or workstation, a phone pad and a head set. The agent may place outbound sales calls to potential customers or field inbound calls (such as 800 number calls) from potential customers. The agents are organized into groups and have associated supervisors, who are responsible for managing and overseeing the agents. Each agent may receive or place calls for different business clients.
One of the difficulties encountered in such a call center is the difficulty of monitoring the phone activity of the agents. It is difficult for a supervisor to obtain useful information about the activities of agents in a timely fashion. Such a lack of information makes it difficult for a supervisor to properly manage the agents and increase the profitability of the call center. In general, a supervisor must perform manual analysis and calculation to obtain useful data regarding agent performance.
The present invention addresses the limitations of the prior art by providing a computerized monitoring system for monitoring telephony resources in a call center. The monitoring system may gather status information and statistics regarding the calling activity of agents within the call center. The monitoring system may display the status information and statistics as part of a graphical user interface. This graphical user interface may include textual and graphical information and serves to display the status information and statistics in a useful and intuitive format.
In accordance with a first aspect of the present invention, a call center includes agent stations to facilitate agents handling calls. Each agent station includes telephony resources through which the agents may handle calls. The call center may also include a monitor for monitoring calling activity of the agents and for producing statistics regarding the calling activity of the agents. A computer system is provided that runs a program for receiving the statistics from the monitor and displays the statistics on a display device.
In accordance with another aspect of the present invention, a computer-implemented method is practiced in a call center that has agents who handle calls. A monitor is provided for monitoring calling activity by the agents. The monitor also gathers statistics regarding the calling activity of the agents. The statistics are passed to an application program on a computer system that displays the statistics on the display device.
In accordance with a further aspect of the present invention, a telecommunications system includes agent stations where agents are stationed to handle calls. Each agent station includes telephony resources for handling calls. The telecommunications system includes a switching mechanism for routing calls and generating raw data regarding the calls. A computer/telephony integration server is provided in the system for receiving the raw data from the switching mechanism and generating events about calling activity based on the raw data. The events are passed to a monitoring server that generates statistics regarding calling activity of the agents. The statistics may be passed to a program running on a workstation. This program may generate output that includes at least some of the statistics.